Lacking a horizontal flight path could make it much more difficult to defend against and with the Navy's new carrier's running at $13 billion plus per ship, losing one would be as great a financial blow as it would be psychological and tactical.

"The thing to keep in mind is that, in order for China to successfully attack a U.S. navy ship with a ballistic missile," Cliff told The Diplomat, "it must first detect the ship, identify it as a U.S. warship of a type that it wishes to attack ... [then] over-the-horizon radars used to detect ships can be jammed, spoofed, or destroyed; smoke and other obscurants can be deployed ... and when the missile locks on to the target its seeker can be jammed or spoofed."